Meerkats & More!

 They say a picture is worth a thousand words.  Well this one is worth a thousand LAUGHS!

Let me introduce you to the Meerkat Cafe!!!

I would definitely say one of our favorite memories from living in Korea last time was all of the fun animal cafes:  cat cafes, dog cafes, raccoon cafes (yes, you read that right!), sheep cafes, etc.  Well, in the six years we have been gone, the cafe scene his exploded.  We have so many more we need to visit!  

The only problem is most of them are in Seoul.  With Covid restrictions quite high right now, Seoul has been off limits to US military members.  At the last second one Saturday morning, they lifted the restrictions briefly, so we rushed up to Seoul while we could.  

And where was the first place we went?  The Meerkat Cafe of course!

The Meerkat Cafe is located in Hongdae -- one of the more trendy neighborhoods of Seoul.  There are multiple universities in the area, so the surrounding streets have a fun, youthful vibe to them.  Over the years, we have found some of our favorite activities in Hongdae.  

Like most places in Seoul, you have to navigate through several small alleyways to find it.  If you are looking for directions on Naver, search for Mieokaet Friends.

When you enter, they have a bunch of instructions to keep the animals (and yourself) safe.

After reading the instructions, paying the entrance fee, and sanitizing your hands, you are free to roam about the cafe.  Most of the animals are separated in small playpens, but a few of the just roam around.  Like this cute Wallaby...

He was so incredibly friendly!  

It's called Meerkat & Friends because there are other animals besides the meerkats.  Everything from raccoons, to arctic foxes, to genets.  It's pretty random, but that's what makes it so fun!

You could play with and hold a lot of the animals.  Here are a few...

The meerkats were by far our favorites though!  They keep them in a pretty large playpen, and before you are allowed to enter, they have you take EVERYTHING out of your pockets.  It seemed a little extreme until we started interacting with them.  They are not shy at all!  They immediately came to check us out.

One came right up and jumped in Emma's lap.

They were super curious.  It wasn't long before we were covered in meerkats!!!

They wanted to sniff and explore every part of us, including our pockets and down into our shorts!  That's the purpose of the blankets they gave us, to try to keep them out of our clothes.  But they are really quick little creatures.  And there were so many of them, we were constantly finding them crawling into some part of us!  

Here's Pete trying to keep his blanket closed to keep them out.

We definitely understood now why you can't have anything in your pockets.

We had so much fun with them!  They were just so incredibly friendly.

And that's when the meerkat selfies started...

I honestly cannot say enough about this little cafe.  It did not disappoint!  

On our way out, we walked by the sheep cafe, but didn't stop.  

By this time we were starving.  We headed over to one of our favorite restaurants in Seoul.

One thing I love about many Korean restaurants is they don't try to serve a bunch of different main dishes.  Some places will only serve one thing, and they cook that one item perfectly.  This is one of those restaurants.  I am pretty sure the sweet little ajumma who was working was the same lady who was here six years ago when we would eat here.  She doesn't speak any English, but we know enough Korean to order.  

Mmmmm...Jjimdak.  This is one of my absolute favorite Korean dishes.  It's like a sweet & spicy chicken stew.  I make it at home, but not nearly as well.  

It was every bit as good as we remembered.

Our last stop on was to Myeongdong.  This was always such a fun place for street food and shopping.  We wanted to show it to Emma since she doesn't remember it very well.  Sadly, Covid restrictions have turned it into a ghost town.  It was really hard to see Myeongdong like this.  It might be because we were there after 6pm, and the restrictions really tighten in the evenings, but so many shops and restaurants were closed up.  It seemed like we were some of the only people there.

It's stores like this that always made Myeongdong fun.  This is a jewelry shop that feels a lot like Olivander's Wand Shop from Harry Potter.  It is floor to ceiling jewelry.  

We had fun browsing the few stores that were open, but sadly, didn't get to enjoy any street food.

And speaking of ghost towns, we stopped by the old military base -- Yongsan.  It was sad to see it all overgrown and mostly closed.  

Emma had fun visiting her old school.  It's crazy how much she has grown up since the last time we lived there.

All in all, it was a fun day in Seoul!

The CHEESIEST Blog Post Ever? Probably!

 Meet Cheese World...

Okay, so it's not technically called Cheese World, but I have given it that nickname.  The real name is "Cheese Theme Park".  That name is pretty awesome too!

"What is Cheese Theme Park," you might ask.  Well, an entire theme park based around CHEESE of course.  I mean...who doesn't love a good cheese theme park?  

Cheese is fairly new to Korea.  It was introduced to the country in 1967 by a Belgian priest named Didier t'Serstevens.  He was gifted two goats while living here, and decided to begin making cheese from the goat milk in an effort to give the Koreans a new product to sell to boost the struggling economy.  It took time, and a lot of learning, but eventually with the help of cheese makers in Switzerland this Belgian priest (locally known as Father Ji) created his own cheese recipe which is still used today in Imsil.  Cheese has become incredibly popular here in Korea, and it all started in the little town of Imsil.  To honor his legacy, and the origins of cheese in Korea, Cheese World was born.

It even has its own mascot

It was designed to look like a village in Switzerland, so it really feels like you have stepped out of Asia and into Europe.  These pictures don't do it justice.  You have to see it for yourself.  It's absolutely beautiful!

Our first stop was the Imsil cheese making experience.  

We were there on a weekday, so it was pretty empty.  The only other people there were a mother and her two kids.  Pete took this picture of me so we could secretly get a picture of this cute family.

It wasn't long before we realized this was more of a preschool program than an adult activity!  It started out with a really cute cartoon about Imsil cheese...all in Korean.  I'm not sure what most of it was about, but there was definitely a princess and some bad guys trying to steal her cheese from the castle.  

After the video, the history of Imsil cheese began...all in Korean of course.  It was exciting every time we heard a word we understood!  Cheese...milk...make...cow.  

I have decided what I really need to improve my Korean language is to join a Korean preschool.  

This will be me in my Korean preschool...

That's pretty much how we felt too at this cheese making experience.  Those little kids got such a kick out of having us there!  They just kept staring and watching us.  You can see them in these next couple of pictures...

We really had no idea what to do most of the time, but we just watched the little kids and did what they did.  And then they laughed and watched us!

Occasionally Pete would take a picture of what was on the screen and translate it through our Papago translation app.  We laughed so hard at this translation!  Apparently Imsil cheese has 0.6% guitar in it.  Who knew?

We couldn't get pictures of most of the cheese making process because both of our hands were busy mixing and stretching cheese, but just imagine this is us...

And here is the finished product.  Mmm....cheese.

They packaged it up for us so we could take it home.

After all of that fun cheese making, we wanted to do some cheese eating, so we headed over to one of the restaurants in the park.  

It had a beautiful view.

The menu had all things cheese.  

While waiting for our food to cook, we decided to dig into our cheese we had just made.  

It was delicious!  I am now a fan of Imsil cheese!!!

Finally our pizza arrived.  It. Was. AMAZING!!!

It could quite possibly be the best pizza I have ever eaten.  No kidding.  I cannot wait to go back to Cheese World just to order this pizza again.

We wandered around the rest of Cheese World.  They had lots of random things there.  

Some cheese related, and some not.

This was an "udderly" good playground.  (Pun intended!)

They even had a scene from the Sound of Music set up on a hill.

Here it is closer.

Even some of the buildings were shaped like cheese.  This was the information center.

The first picture doesn't really show how huge the building was.  This one gives a little more perspective.

I think my personal favorite though was the cheese whale.  If you could make anything out of cheese, why wouldn't you make a whale?

I wish I had taken a picture inside the whale.  There was a story about how the cheese ended up inside the whale.  It was really cute.

Our next stop was the enormous cheese wheel on the hill.  You can see it here in the distance

And here it is a little closer

You can actually take the elevator up to the observation deck.  The view is pretty amazing.

This was the entrance to the children's playground.  You could get there by slide.

While the playground was closed due to Covid, the slide was not.  It was so much fun!

There was even a little exotic animal farm.  It didn't really have much to do with cheese, but it was fun.  Here were a few of the birds.

And of course, there was a trick eye museum.  Maybe that's fitting because the pictures are so cheesy!

Our final stop was the Imsil Cheese Castle.

It turned out to be another restaurant, but after seeing this Virus Killing Booth, we had to go in!

It was definitely a successful trip to Imsil.  

And definitely the CHEESIEST thing I have done in my life.